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Yes, Gamers, There Is Holiday Fun Without a Wii

Hanukkah is over. Christmas is less than two weeks away. This is the big time for all kinds of businesses, but for no mode of entertainment (except maybe the Rockettes) is the holiday season more frenzied than video games. The last months of the year are when game companies throw open their warehouses and when even nongamers get caught up trying to find the latest must-have title or system for a player they know and love.

Here, then, are a few tips to keep in mind when wandering the game aisles.

The Elusive Wii

In 2005 Microsoft released its latest console, the Xbox 360. Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii came in 2006. It will be at least a few more years before the upgrade cycle starts again, so 2007 is a bit of a preview of the next several years of holiday game wars, with the 360, PS3 and Wii duking it out for market leadership.

The hit system of the year has certainly been the Wii, which could sell as many as seven million units in the United States in 2007. Propelled by a relatively modest $249 price, a family-friendly reputation and a control system — just point and wave — that almost anyone can enjoy, the Wii has basically been sold out across the country all year. There are almost certainly dozens, if not hundreds, of people stamping their feet in the cold outside electronics stores nationwide right now. Nintendo churns out about 1.8 million Wiis a month for the whole world, and that simply is not enough to meet demand.

If eBay is out of the question and you want to find one at retail, getting a Wii really comes down to one word: connections. There are rumors online of cookies, brandy and even the odd cash lagniappe being lavished on store managers who will tell just when their stores will be getting in a shipment.

Even Nintendo executives’ best advice is to cultivate local intelligence.

“You can certainly tell by looking around the country it’s kind of crazy out there,” George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing and corporate communications at Nintendo of America, said in a telephone interview this week. “If you can chat up your local store manager to find out when their shipments are coming in, you’ll have a better chance of being there in the first few hours. Also, if you have a friend or relative who works for a store, they might have a better chance to tell you when they’re coming in.”

Mr. Harrison said that Sunday mornings could be a good time to try to find a Wii, as retailers sometimes hold them in stock to meet demand generated by advertisements in Sunday newspaper circulars. He pointed out that retailers might have had to contract for those inserts months ago, before it became clear that the Wii would remain in short supply through the holidays.

Complaints about violence in video games can remind you of Mark Twain’s great bit of climatology: “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Well, when it comes to violent games there is something parents can do about it: Don’t buy them for kids.

The game industry has spent millions of dollars developing the Entertainment Software Rating Board system (esrb.com). Every game sold for any of the major consoles, and almost every game sold for PCs, is labeled prominently with its rating, like T for Teen or M for Mature.

The average age of gamers is in the late 20s, so the industry has more than enough adult customers for its violent games. Moreover, surveys have shown that major retailers are at least as diligent in preventing the sale of inappropriate games to children as movie theaters are in keeping kids out of R-rated movies.

The big problem seems to be that many parents who would never dream of sending their children to an R-rated movie, not to mention buying them R-rated DVDs as holiday presents, blithely buy them M-rated games meant for adults.

To be fair, the game industry is far more conservative than Hollywood in labeling its wares. (Even the most violent games are not nearly as gory as R-rated films like the “Saw” and “Hostel” series.) But parents should at least seriously consider whether their 11-year-old needs to be playing a game meant for people over 17. Just because something is a video game does not mean it is appropriate for children.

Photo

Credit
Scott Brundage

From a parent’s perspective, one of the good things about video games is that they are consumed mostly at home, where adults can monitor them. Just as important, all of the major new consoles come with parental-control systems built in, so a parent can determine just what sorts of games may be played on that machine.

You might not think that older folks would have an interest in anything with a chip in it. Stop underestimating your elders. Not only has the Wii proven a hit in retirement communities and on cruise ships, but the Brain Age series for Nintendo’s DS hand-held has already sold millions of copies to older consumers looking to maintain a mental edge.

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“Mental fitness” is a big buzz term these days, and the Brain Age series, with its collection of minigames including Sudoku, tapped into the 50-and-over audience first in Japan and now in the United States. Publishers like Ubisoft are branching out with more self-improvement games for the DS like that company’s My Word Coach (for English vocabulary improvement), My French Coach and My Spanish Coach.

Bracketing the traditional gamer demographics, the DS has also proved popular with girls through titles like Nintendogs, which may be why the pink version of the DS is largely sold out. Other colors are still available, though, for $129.

Sony, Where Art Thou?

Sony dominated the previous generation of game wars with its PlayStation 2, but the last few years have not been quite as kind to the former king.

Unless there is a specific PS3 game you want to play, like the fabulous new Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, it is still difficult to recommend buying a PlayStation 3, even its least-expensive $399 version. There just are not yet enough great games exclusively for the system. An exception: If you really want to play high-definition Blu-Ray movie discs, the PS3 can be a relatively inexpensive Blu-Ray player.

But despite the PS3’s problems, Sony still offers two compelling game systems this holiday season.

First is the PSP portable, which costs as little as $169 and features a more traditional menu of action and sports games than Nintendo’s DS. The PSP has superior graphics and, unlike the DS, is also a full-fledged portable media player. You can buy movies that play on the PSP’s optical-disc system and load digital music files onto the unit as well. I use a PSP rather than an iPod as my music player when traveling.

The second good buy from Sony is the venerable PlayStation 2, which costs around $130. It doesn’t have the snazziest graphics, but as a machine that has sold more than 100 million units, it is still supported by the deepest console game library around. If you buy a PS2, be sure to also get God of War II, the best new game for the system and one of the best for any system this year.

The Default Position

It may sound like a knock, but calling the Xbox 360 today’s default gaming system is high praise. It’s a title Microsoft could have only dreamed of just a few years ago when the original Xbox sometimes seemed like little more than a novelty in the face of Sony’s PlayStation 2 juggernaut.

Despite problems with the hardware’s reliability, the 360 has established itself as a baseline system for even semiserious players. (The Wii is largely for everyone else.) Many of the biggest and best new games come out for the 360 these days, including the spectacular BioShock and Mass Effect, each a provocative entertainment experience for adults.

The 360 is available in various configurations, but it is not worth buying the least expensive version, which costs $279. It will only end in tears several hours, days or weeks later when you realize that without a hard drive you will not be able to take full advantage of many of the coolest features of the Xbox Live Internet service, like downloading game trailers, demonstrations and even full movies. The standard version with a hard drive costs $349 and is a better long-term investment.

Their Generation

The new games Guitar Hero III and Rock Band are each steeped in classic rock riffs. Who needs a joystick when you can pick up a plastic Les Paul? Who needs to shoot aliens when you can channel your inner Pete Townshend?

What, you’ve never heard of Pete Townshend? Then buy one of these games for your parents and watch them regress. Yes, they were teenagers once too.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page E19 of the New York edition with the headline: Yes, Gamers, There Is Holiday Fun Without a Wii. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe